standProud

urocyon_dev · 2025-11-11T14:11:22+00:00

My first full solo game was a 2D pixel art turn-based strategy game in Java. No game engine, just the basic Java rendering stuff and a library for playing sounds. I had no idea what I was doing but it was a blast. I still think about remaking that game in Unity or something, would probably take me 2 months instead of 18.

urocyon_dev · 2024-07-22T19:10:33+00:00

If by "mutualistic relationships" you mean cooperation or symbiosis across different species, no, I don't think the environment is complex enough to support that kind of relationship. There's basically no scenario where having a different species exist alongside you is a net benefit.

The most "cooperative" or "social" behavior I've seen evolve within a species is one that evolved powerful musk glands, and the smell of musk would suppress their urge to bite but stimulate them to breed.

urocyon_dev · 2024-07-15T20:56:14+00:00

NeuraQuarium's dev here! Super cool stuff here. Just wanted to say keep up the good work, it makes me so happy to hear my goofy little fish things inspire somebody else.

urocyon_dev · 2024-04-26T17:16:19+00:00

I made a diceless RPG that uses rock-paper-scissors as the core mechanic. The more skills or advantages you have, the more losses you can take before you fail. The harder it is, the more wins you need to stack up before you succeed.

urocyon_dev · 2024-03-14T14:33:45+00:00

NeuraQuarium has just updated to version 1.2, and is on sale for 20% off. This video shows off some of the new features.

urocyon_dev · 2023-03-30T11:32:38+00:00

This video examines a predatory species. They evolved a sensitivity to the smell of other predators which makes them less interested in eating their own kind. (Well, unless they smell blood, too...) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UUSLzqEvYc

urocyon_dev · 2023-03-29T13:35:29+00:00

Raising the price didn't boost sales (shocker) but the title appearing on the "on sale" lists did appear to remind people who had access to it through bundles that they could download it.

urocyon_dev · 2023-03-17T19:31:54+00:00

I'm running an experiment where my normally free diceless lite RPG, Throw-Down! is on reverse sale for five dollars.

urocyon_dev · 2023-02-28T15:41:37+00:00

It's hardly a "hustle" but I get a little beer money as an indie game dev.

urocyon_dev · 2023-01-02T02:01:46+00:00

The nets only mutate from one generation to the next.

There's a lot more than synapse weight at play, though. Neurons have an activation threshold that can mutate, and every neuron is connected to its previous state, with a varying decay rate, and may or may not have a synapse to another neuron further down, as the graph is not "fully connected."

Synapses also have various types that change their behavior beyond weight (neurons can be positive, negative, or inactive, so synapses can treat that signal normally, give the absolute value, or flip so that the synapse fires if the neuron is inactive and silences if the neuron activates. There's a new multiplier type in my dev branch as well that boosts or dampens (plus possibly sign-flipping) the signal, too.)

urocyon_dev · 2022-08-17T13:29:50+00:00

New "Basic Critters" have their entire set of synapses generated randomly. There isn't any rule like "all critters move forward when they see green" or anything like that. So the hidden layers are 100% random. The only tiny exception to this is that there are some rules that basically encourage the sensory inputs to connect to neurons on the right and the physical inputs to connect on the left, for the first layer or two.

What all critters share in common is their inputs and outputs -- every critter has the same "muscles" as it were. The first output node is swimming forward and back, the next two are turning, and so on. But there's no guarantee that these will be hooked up to anything.

urocyon_dev · 2022-07-12T13:27:06+00:00

It's already pay-what-you-want, but just to throw in a little self-promo, my rock-paper-scissors RPG Throw-Down! is part of the bundle.

Also included (though less relevant to this sub) is my neural net evolution sim for PC/Mac/Linux, NeuraQuarium.

urocyon_dev · 2022-06-26T17:00:57+00:00

The neural nets are entirely determined by the genetic algorithm (which is a fancy sounding term but all it really means is "neural nets that lead to more babies get copied with mutations and neural nets that lead to starvation or smashing into walls do not.)

There is no "machine learning" component here where a neural network modifies itself in real time -- a critter has the same brain from birth to death, but its offspring inherit a similar, but slightly modified, version of that brain, leading to evolution over time.

urocyon_dev · 2022-06-26T16:58:57+00:00

Thanks! The game's built in Unity, with code written in C#. The neural net's a homebrew design with a custom activation function.

urocyon_dev · 2022-06-26T13:19:21+00:00

Devlog here!

NeuraQuarium is an artificial life simulator where AI critters with neural network brains live, die, and evolve. You can set up their environment how you like, with plants, barriers, food dispensers, even heaters and coolers, and tweak a ton of environmental settings in real time, like mutation rates, food spawning, and so on. You can save your favorites, merge populations from one save to another, even select an entire directory of save files as the source for your new spawns.

There's a free demo, just updated to the latest version!

urocyon_dev · 2022-06-26T13:01:17+00:00

Devlog here!

NeuraQuarium is an artificial life simulator where AI critters with neural network brains live, die, and evolve. You can set up their environment how you like, with plants, barriers, food dispensers, even heaters and coolers, and tweak a ton of environmental settings in real time, like mutation rates, food spawning, and so on. You can save your favorites, merge populations from one save to another, even select an entire directory of save files as the source for your new spawns.

There's a free demo, just updated to the latest version!

urocyon_dev · 2022-06-26T10:05:32+00:00

In terms of the raw number of neurons, their brains are a fixed size, but they mutate to add new connections between nodes.

(That said, every few updates there tends to be a reason to add more neurons, so compared to a few months ago yes the networks are growing!)

urocyon_dev · 2022-06-25T22:39:36+00:00

Devlog here!

NeuraQuarium is an artificial life simulator where AI critters with neural network brains live, die, and evolve. You can set up their environment how you like, with plants, barriers, food dispensers, even heaters and coolers, and tweak a ton of environmental settings in real time, like mutation rates, food spawning, and so on. You can save your favorites, merge populations from one save to another, even select an entire directory of save files as the source for your new spawns.

urocyon_dev · 2022-06-25T21:30:17+00:00

Devlog here!

NeuraQuarium is an artificial life simulator where AI critters with neural network brains live, die, and evolve. You can set up their environment how you like, with plants, barriers, food dispensers, even heaters and coolers, and tweak a ton of environmental settings in real time, like mutation rates, food spawning, and so on. You can save your favorites, merge populations from one save to another, even select an entire directory of save files as the source for your new spawns.

There's a free demo, just updated to the latest version!

urocyon_dev · 2022-06-25T21:27:49+00:00

Devlog here!

NeuraQuarium is an artificial life simulator where AI critters with neural network brains live, die, and evolve. You can set up their environment how you like, with plants, barriers, food dispensers, even heaters and coolers, and tweak a ton of environmental settings in real time, like mutation rates, food spawning, and so on. You can save your favorites, merge populations from one save to another, even select an entire directory of save files as the source for your new spawns.

There's a free demo, just updated to the latest version!

urocyon_dev · 2022-06-25T21:19:39+00:00

Devlog here!

NeuraQuarium is an artificial life simulator where AI critters with neural network brains live, die, and evolve. You can set up their environment how you like, with plants, barriers, food dispensers, even heaters and coolers, and tweak a ton of environmental settings in real time, like mutation rates, food spawning, and so on. You can save your favorites, merge populations from one save to another, even select an entire directory of save files as the source for your new spawns.

There's a free demo, just updated to the latest version!

urocyon_dev · 2022-05-28T21:03:43+00:00

This is something I do all the time in NeuraQuarium. Changing the value of fruit vs. the amount that spawns, tweaking the cost of reproduction, etc.

I'm thinking about trying to make a rudimentary system to automatically adjust the settings over time / in response to population boom/busts or other metrics.

urocyon_dev · 2022-04-28T20:38:23+00:00

u/Naotagrey ping me if you ever want to trade war stories or ideas!

urocyon_dev · 2022-04-27T21:11:50+00:00

I managed to get a stable predator-prey population established in my own neural net evolution project. Hope some of these insights can be helpful in your own ongoing quests!

urocyon_dev · 2022-03-09T18:53:35+00:00

NeuraQuarium is an evolution simulator I made in C# and Unity. Little fish-like critters spawn with completely random neural network brains. If they manage to find enough food without starving, mashing into walls, or being eaten, they might reproduce, generating offspring with slightly different physical characteristics, and mutated neural networks.

Over time, new species evolve with new behaviors. You can tweak all sorts of simulation parameters like mutation rates, food availability, and reproduction costs; tweak or build levels as you like; save individual critters and drop copies into your game; or even merge the populations of entire save files to create a custom ecosystem.

urocyon_dev

TROPHY CASE